Ex-owner rues what could have been
Bronfman hopes Montreal gets new major league team, but not interested in being part of group
Original Expos owner Charles Bronfman thinks Major League Baseball could work again in Montreal — just don’t ask him to get involved.
“Look, it would be great if it happened. The question is how it happens and who would lead the charge and so on,” Bronfman said over the phone from New York on Monday morning.
“(Warren) Cromartie has spoken to me … he has spoken to everybody,” Bronfman added about the former Expo who is now president of the Montreal Baseball Project, which seeks to bring a team back to the city. “I would not go back into it. I’ve been there, done that and that’s over for me. And I do not live in Montreal anymore and I think local ownership is terribly important.”
Bronfman now has homes in Palm Beach, Fla., and New York, but he was flying back to Montreal on Monday afternoon for a special occasion. The 84-year-old was being inducted into the Montreal Jewish Sports Hall of Fame.
In 1969, at age 38, Bronfman became a baseball owner — even though he had never actually played a baseball game in his life — bringing Canada its first major-league team with a price tag of $10 million. He told baseball author Jonah Keri it was a chance for him to do something for “his city and province and country.”
From Day 1 of his Expos ownership, Bronfman had dreams of a downtown stadium with a retractable roof. He even had thoughts about adding a second deck to Jarry Park, the Expos’ original home, along with a sliding roof — or as he called it Monday, “a convertible.”
Instead, Bronfman — and Montrealers — got Olympic Stadium, the billion-dollar Big Owe in 1976. But Bronfman noted on Monday: “I don’t know if we would have had baseball in Montreal without (former mayor Jean Drapeau’s) Olympic dream, so in one way it was good.”
Bronfman says a major league team could work again in Montreal, but added that a downtown stadium with 35,000 seats and a retractable roof would be a must.
“The problem would be revenue,” he added. “With the fluctuation of the Canadian dollar … it was $1.10 or $1.04 a year ago. Now it’s 81 cents.
“That’s very difficult to work out financially because you’re paying just about everything in U.S. dollars and a lot of your revenue is in Canadian dollars, so that makes it tough.”
It’s ironic Bronfman’s love affair with baseball — make that the business of baseball — came to an end as a result of one of the most popular players in Expos history, Gary Carter. When the catcher — who died in February 2012 after battling brain cancer — demanded an eightyear $16-million US contract in 1982, Bronfman was left fuming.
“When I got into (Major League Baseball), it was a sport,” Bronfman said. “If you had a bad year you could lose $100,000, a very bad year you’d lose $200,000.
“By the time I left you could lose $10 million or $20 million. So baseball had changed from a sport to a business.”
Carter was dealt to the New York Mets in December 1984 — along with the final five years of a sevenyear, $13.1-million US contract he signed with the Expos — in exchange for shortstop Hubie Brooks, catcher Mike Fitzgerald, pitcher Floyd Youmans and outfielder Herm Winningham.
Bronfman finally sold the Expos in 1991 to a group that would be headed by Claude Brochu for $104 million. That ownership group sold the team to MLB in 2003 for $120 million before the league sold the franchise to Washington — where it became the Nationals in 2005 — for $450 million.
Bronfman was asked Monday if he could go back in history and change one thing from his days owning the Expos, what would it be?
“I would somehow or other, through thick or thin, have gotten us into the World Series,” he said. “That’s the one regret that I have.”
scowan@montrealgazette.com
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